Alive
by MinstrelBoy
Summary: Noata tries to retain his sanity while dealing with a life where nothing amazing happens.


**Disclaimer: I don't own FLCL.**

**A/N: **This started as me messing around with part of another story I did, but got waaay off track and turned into something else. Either way, I had to do this before I could do anything else. Hopefully now I can finally update said other story.** PS, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SOMEONE TELL ME HOW TO INDENT ON THIS SITE  
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Noata lie in the dark, eyes open, staring at the bunk bed above him. He shifted his eyes to the right. The clock on his night stand read 4:55 A.M. He'd get up at five, that was when his alarm would go off. He returned to staring at the bunk above him. No thoughts crossed his mind, only painful consciousness of his own consciousness.  
With only a few seconds to spare he turned off his alarm, hating its disrespectful buzzing in the pre-dawn stillness. Swinging his legs over his bed, he let eyes wander from the floor in front of him to the far wall. Shapeless mounds of cloths. His school uniform thrown over his chair. Book bag dropped next to the door. Closet half open. Desk against the far wall, a mess of important papers he had never looked at covering the top. He looked toward the window, which let in a blue glow who's tangibility was debatable to off set nights black. Then he let himself look at what he new he would look at, the shadow rapped Rickenbacker bass guitar that sat, unused and unmaintained in what had once seemed a position of prominence.  
He walked barefoot, carefully around the clutter, to the balcony in his boxers. He stretched, feeling the cool air on his chest. Behind and below him his family lay sleep. He would be gone before they woke. He cast an eye over his shoulder, to the spot where Canti used to sit. The only spot in the room that never had any trash on it. The robot had wandered off some years ago, while going to buy cigarettes. At first the idea of a robot with a smoking habit seemed ridiculous, but it seemed the lord of the black flame missed his sole apostle.  
He walked back into his room, and threw his uniform disdainfully over his empty frame. He left the bathroom door open as he splashed water on his face. He had no intention of turning on the light and beginning the same day the rest of the world would share. He stared at the shadows he knew to be his face in the mirror. If it had been any other face but his he would not of recognized it for the dark. The shallow cheeks that spoke of too little sleep and food and too much thought. And the eyes, hidden in the absence of light, world weary at 17 and searching for answers that were not there and would not be.  
Pack on his back, he left the house with out a noise and knowing he would not be missed at breakfast. He looked about the empty streets, the silent and darkened houses. There was no one. If everyone else in the world had disappeared in the night, this is what it would look like. He savored the desolation. If he could see no evidence of others, they didn't exist, ergo he owned the town by default. With out a sense of purpose he began to walk toward nothing at all. But that wasn't true, was it? He couldn't deny he knew exactly where he'd end up.  
Fifteen minutes later, like three out of five mornings, he was at what he would always think of as 'Mamimi's bridge'. He walked down the embankment, dewy grass sticking to his dress shoes. He reached the concrete landing where he had spent many an afternoon in grade school. Squatting down, he let his hand dangle in the water, feeling the ebb and flow of the current as it was made by man made tributaries closer to Tokyo. There was something marked in the pavement below his right foot. His shifted to see. It was a heart, with two initials in it. Initials he recognized instantly. Mamami and his brother. Her hand writing. He had seen this mark once before.

He was 14. Two years since Haroku had left. Beginning to understand what she had left for him. Nothing but a normal life. That wasn't true. She also left something in him that would rather die than submit itself to being just another member of society. Maybe it was vanity at being chosen for such an adventure in the first place, maybe it was a sense of destiny. Even inside his own mind, maybe especially, it was all relative. Hell, relativity, as he would learn, had been the law of the universe since Einstein.  
Saturday night. While the rest of his friends went to their new high school's parties, he walked the streets by himself. He found himself by the radio tower. He idly ran his hand along one leg of the tower, his fingers finding a grove. Curious, he used his cell phone to light up the area of his finger tips. A heart, his brother and his flown friend's initials on the inside. The lines blackened, like someone had held a lighter to it. Two more names that had abandoned him, both fled to America. He looked to the top of the tower. A soft wind blew his hair around his ears. The wind would be stronger on top of the tower. The lock that covered the first ten feet of the ladder was busted off, years ago by the look of.  
Noata climbed steadily, feeling something building inside him as he got higher. He couldn't define it except it as urge to act. To erase the last two years of deadened soul with one expression to remembered forever, at the cost of his body and soul. Minor payments compared to the feeling of life once more coursing through his veins, filling his heart, waking parts of him unused since he fought in the skies above the plant years ago.  
And no need to ever come down. Just know life, if only because if the impending darkness, the end of all things. He was as high as he could get now. Standing exactly where Mamimi had stood to watch him knock a killer satellite out of the Earth's gravitational well. Gripping the rail tight, feeling the cold metal, the chipped paint, the rust leaving orange stains on his hands.  
All so easy from here. Put your feet on the rail, turn around, let go, Stand up. The wind would blow yes, and oh was it strong here, pushing him about, recalling him as part of this world, but all he had to do was lean back.  
He would stand on that rail, arms spread wide, Christ like in his martyrdom to his belief this world was not good enough. He could see his own eyes, wide and wild and filled with an intensity to burn to through to the soul of others. Frighting, free, not what other saw as his own but truer now than ever before.  
And fall, and fall smiling, through the bitter winter air, to know true freedom. For only a brief second but never to return to the bondage of life he did not accept. The lights of Mabase upside down in his vision. Ground, coming to embrace him as it's own forever. More alive now than ever. Cold air, ripping at his face. The wind would snatch away his breath, but not enough to stop his laughter. Or maybe he would be serene, like a deranged Buddha. Or scream.  
And time would slow and he would live the remainder of a full life in the space of a second as he rocketed toward that hard unforgiving concrete, the inevitable deceleration.  
No one would miss him. Or, more accurately, he would miss no one, because he would feel nothing, not even that he never felt. He would finally be truly free of his past and the ghosts. Especially the pink haired ghost who taunted his dreams with promises of a life that was just a little more, actually a lot more, than this.  
And he would land next to the carved initials, and he would splash just under them, blood washing the soot from the groves, exposing what had been writ, what had once been the only thing in the galaxy that was true, what was now just another dream gone wrong.

But he didn't. He was too chicken-shit. A coward too afraid of the unknown, of the God he told himself he did not believe in to jump. And he hated, truly hated and wished to destroy, himself. But he was too much of a coward. And that made him hate himself more. And for the first time he realized how fucked up he truly was. Not pop-psychology fucked up, where you went to a therapist because you felt your parents wronged you, but so fucked up a psychiatrist and years of narcotics would maybe stall the inevitable. The note and the people whispering, how they never suspected, he seemed so normal, why would a young man with so much promise..  
He dropped to his knees, clutched his temples and screamed. And it was lost on the wind, never heard by anyone but him. Then the vomit came, staining his knees and leaving him weak and exhausted and smelling his own sick on his clothes and feeling the gritty puke in his teeth as his fists clenched and ripped clumps of hair out.  
The next day he lay in his bed, and the sun rose. Numbness set in.

Laying in Eri's bed, her parent's gone for the weekend. Her naked body warm against his. He stared at the celing. He could just lower his head and pretend he was safe with her hair nuzzled against his cheek, like first acted on love was supposed to be. But it wasn't. She cared. He knew. But she was not his world and vice versa. They were just two people who needed comfort, and that was the extent of it. No love. He could never confide with out reservation in her. Neither would give it all up for each other.  
It would be so much easier if she didn't care so he could just give up on the whole damn thing, but she did. the little things said she cared more than a friend, but she would never make the effort he, and Haroku had once made. And for that, he could never truly give him self up and trust her.  
Her breasts felt good against his ribs, her breath tickled his skin. And he tried to remember the last time he felt a a damn thing. The answer was obvious. The tower. When he had almost freed himself from the world. Was that it? Did he need to go through with it to wake himself?  
He was back the next night. When he was sure she was asleep he allowed himself to hold her just a bit tighter as he debated ripping their relationship apart before he left the world behind. It would be easier on her if she wasn't involved. Her hand slid up and down his bare shoulder before Eri sighed with content and resettled her head.  
The fan above the bed reassembled the darkness with its shadow. Somewhere in the house a clock counted away their lives.  
"Godamnit, Eri."

Ninamori's parents were at a political function, so they had the house to themselves after school. They made love in her parent's bed. As his climax wore away, Naota's head filled not with thoughts of love and comfort and sleep, but a realism colder than even his normally jaded mind lived in. As he buttoned his shirt a thought came into his mind unexpectedly. One that he felt confident enough in the glow of the small death to ask Eri.  
'If I did something so stupid, it fucked up the rest of my life, if I threw my life away and went somewhere else, right now, tonight, would you come with me?' But as the thought articulated itself in his mind, he watched Eri dress, never looking at him. And he never said a word. Because there is no point in asking a question you already know the answer to. So he dressed. And he left, per their unspoken agreement. And he was getting better at suppressing the urge to scream. To shake her by the collar and yell that he was not okay in her face, and beg for her to save him and somehow wake him from the dream he'd been watching since she left. Hell, he would of been happy if she would just lay her head on him and ask. But she couldn't. And he wouldn't. So he left and nothing changed. The sky was pale orange from the city's glow. The only night sky he had ever known. He hadn't slept next to Eri in months. A small act of coldness on her part had pushed him away with fear of getting hurt. So he distanced himself. And she did the same in response, until there was no expectation from either of them for anything. When her parents were gone and he came over now, they just grew farther apart, becoming strangers.

Message sent 5:26 PM - Hey Message received from ERI at 6:13 PM - Hey, what's up?  
Message sent 6:15 PM - Not much, wanna get together tonight?  
Message received from ERI at 11:14 AM - Sorry, got caught up in work last night.  
"What ever." Noata clapped his phone shut. And thus Eri would not respond untill he saw her at school Monday.

In class he stared out the window at that damn radio tower. "Hey, Masashi.." He said. Masashi didn't look up from him book.  
"Yeah man, what's up?" The brief pause in conversation was filled by a passing jet.  
"If you see a movie, and the first half has sucked pretty bad, and it shows no signs of improving, there'sno shame in walking out early, right?"  
"No man, none at all." Noata continued to stare at the tower. The lock was probably still busted. His dried vomit was probably still up there too.

It was midway through the afternoon when it hit him. It was time finally. To stay now would be a fate worse then the bottom of the tower offered. When the bell rang, he picked up his bag and left. The last Masashi and Genku ever saw him, he was walking like a free man in the direction of the old radio tower.  
It was one of those anomalous days in early fall that were nicer than summer. The wind ruffled his hair, and he could smell the living things, grass and trees. There was no way describe the scent but that. Living things. How could he not smell them all summer? Maybe it was the contrast of the coming fall and winter. They were there now because they knew were about to die. Noata could relate.  
The last one he saw was Eri as he arrived at his destination. He turned around and she was simply there. There was no way to hide his intention from her. They just looked at each other. There was a brief moment when she opened her mouth, but closed it, quickly looking from Naota to where he was going. Finally she turned to face him, her body language naked but Her mouth opened again.  
Then he turned and left her too.

The sun blinked in and out as he passed through the shadows. He did not yell, he was calm. Mabase flew past his vision. He felt.. free. Free and happy that he had finally made his decision and gone through with it. He felt. It would all be over with soon, he would never see the town that had broken him mentally again. He chuckled to himself. Smiling, he remembered Eri's final words and closed his eyes. It was done. He slipped away.  
"I know. And I know why. Please come home some day, Naota." The words spoke to his back as he walked up the steps to the station. When he woke up, the train was stopped in the country. He walked outside. He looked up at the stars above him. A storm was coming. He could smell the rain. He was still alive, and smiled.


End file.
